


Happy 2:07am?

by holyneutrality (mystictopaztristar)



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M, New Year's Fluff, Tricia only makes a cameo but the girl needs love too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 11:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17559311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystictopaztristar/pseuds/holyneutrality
Summary: Tweek and Craig have had a standing arrangement on New Year's Eve for years. What would make Craig miss it without notice?





	Happy 2:07am?

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a silly little drabble that got stuck in my head based on Tweek's apparent immunity to the cold, if I'm being honest. I just framed it in a cute premise, because Creek is so good.

Time didn’t travel backward, did it? No. That is only in black holes, he thinks. No, that isn’t right either. Time travels faster in the edges of black holes so that everyone you left behind turns into dust by the time you break free. That… probably isn’t right either, but it seems closer to being right, not that it matters. He isn’t actually circling a black hole. It just feels like it with how slowly time is creeping along like it’s mocking him. 

Or someone keeps setting the clock back. No, that’s silly. They can’t actually do that. Or can they? Not being able to do it is exactly what they would want you to think if they really could just port in and change the time. But then all the time would be different from that one, and he would be late, and the new year wouldn’t have been at the right time, and…  
Tweek tugs hard at his hair, letting the painful sensation ground him. This is stupid. None of that is true. It’s all just stupid anxiety intruding on his night. He isn’t even really anxious about the time. He is anxious about what the creeping time represents. Allowing these thoughts to intrude is far better than considering the alternative, but even this is not going to work for much longer.

Fidgeting digits tug too hard at one of the color shifting sequins on the novelty throw pillow, ripping it off. With a frustrated shriek, he hurls the offending object across the room. He springs off the couch, stalking to the front door. Slipping his feet into the slippers left there, the door slams behind him as he stalks off into the night.

It’s cold and clear, despite the snow littering the ground, but in South Park, practically the only time snow isn’t littering the ground is in summer. It doesn’t even seem to matter whether there was a storm or not. Maybe there were snow gnomes, like the underpants gnomes, but instead of stealing underpants, they put snow out when no one is looking.  
Actually, on second thought, that would be ridiculous. Clearly they’re snow fairies. Snow glitters in the right lighting, fairies glitter. It has to be fairies. Gnomes are too corporate for glitter. Unless they also have a glitter corporation, which is entirely possible. It has been a long time since they met with the diminutive intimates thieves. Maybe they have branched out by now. Tweek makes a mental note to wait for them and ask. But not tonight. On another night.

Tonight, he is a man on a mission. This mission is completely undeterred by these randomly intrusive thoughts about the weather and its aftermath.It also speaks volumes about his current mental state he doesn’t even bother questioning them. 

Somewhere during the contemplation of underpants gnomes and snow fairies, the young blond finds himself on a familiar doorstep. His fist is pounding on the door before he is even aware enough to consider the hour. If it wasn’t the time of night it was, he wouldn’t be here to begin with. The sound startles him out of his dissociative reverie with a soft shriek.

The door opens, revealing bleary eyes peering out at him from beneath messy strawberry blonde hair “Tweek?” Tricia Tucker stifles a yawn. She takes in his form, ill clad in just his shirtsleeves, boxers and slippers, one hand again tugging anxiously at his hair, face red and breath puffed out in visible, panted breaths. “What’s going on?”

The Tuckers, as a family, are not known for their sympathetic or emotional natures, so the question isn’t as harsh as her delivery makes it sound, but she also doesn’t really care either. While he isn’t as bad as he used to be, emergencies with Tweek are rarely half so dire as he makes them out to be, assuming they have any merit at all. Although being pantless on their doorstep in the middle of the night is a new one, she will admit, making her a little more curious than usual. But not enough to put effort into finding out the reason. Mainly she just wants to go back to bed, having been the only one woken up by the insistent pounding on their door.

“Where’s Craig?” he blurts out, offering absolutely no other information in the way of an explanation for his surprise presence at the house in the middle of the night. The question should serve as explanation enough as far as his addled mind is concerned. Logic is thready and fleeting at best, and Tweek is hardly at his best at the moment.

“In his room?” Her response lilts up at the end, as if it’s a question, but it is less a question of where her older brother is and more a question of why Tweek is standing there asking her and twitching like a clock hand stuck in a loop.

This draws a loud groan of frustrated relief from him. Destination acquired, he blows past Tricia without so much as an acknowledgment she answered him, let alone any gratitude, making a beeline for Craig’s room. 

“You’re welcome.” She levels a middle finger at Tweek’s retreating form. “Next time just use the fucking phone like a sane person,” she grumbles, stifling a yawn. Shutting and locking the door, she makes her way back to her own room, now completely uninterested in whatever dramatics have seized her brother’s boyfriend this time, and rather grateful she doesn’t seem to be required to deal with it any more than she just did.

Meanwhile, the door to Craig’s room opens abruptly, the anxiety ridden blond crossing the distance between it and the bed in fewer strides than should be possible. “Craig!” he shouts at the sleeping form. 

He is sleeping right? Yes. There. His chest is moving. He might even be dreaming. Or maybe Tweek is just imagining the movement beneath the eyelids. It’s hard to tell in the almost non-existent lighting in the bedroom. 

Looking even more worse for wear than his sister had at the door, Craig’s eyes crack open, peering up at the intruder. “Tweek?” He pushes himself up on one elbow. “What are you doing here? What time is it? Why don’t you have any pants on?” The last question trails a little after the first two, as he belatedly realizes those are bare legs and boxers and not some strange fashion disaster hallucination.

“It’s…” His eyes dart wildly about the room, finally settling on a clock, proclaiming the time in warm red numbers. Their confirmation of how late it was is strangely comforting. He might have been freaking out, but at least he wasn’t entirely crazy. “After two!” 

“What? No. That can’t be right.” Craig reaches out with his free arm for his phone. Pushing the button to light up the screen, the time reads 2:07 am, along with notifications of missed calls and a deluge of messages from his boyfriend, along with a few messages from other people Tweek had bothered in his growing panic. “Shit, honey. I’m so sorry. I thought I set an alarm.”

He looks genuinely contrite. All Craig had wanted to do was catch a nap before going over to Tweek’s house to mark the New Year with him. Unlike some people, he didn’t really care about the night time holiday much, at least not when compared to sleep, so it had been a reasonable compromise. One they had been doing successfully for years, until this year, that is. It made the panic over his absence understandable, since Craig had always arrived rather punctually at 11:30 pm each previous occasion. 

Lunging forward, Tweek wraps his arms around his boyfriend, heedless of how awkward the angle makes things. One arm is over Craig’s lower shoulder, the other arm beneath his upper one, face buried into the exposed shoulder. “I thought you were dead! Or worse!” he practically sobs in relief. 

Craig sets his phone down, rubbing Tweek’s back in a soft, soothing motion. “What’s worse than being dead?” he asks seriously. 

This gets the blond to pull back and search his boyfriend’s face for any sign he is being mocked. When he doesn’t find one, he allows himself to be surprised. “Do you really want to know?” he counters. He is fully prepared to list off every single thing that could happen to someone he would consider to be worse than death, but it isn’t usually welcomed.

Giving a light chuckle, Craig’s lips quirk up slightly. “Probably not, but it did get you to stop strangling me.”

“You jerk!” Tweek swats him on the arm and stands upright again. “Right. Well. Since you’re okay, I guess I can go home now.” He doesn’t particularly seem like he wants to leave, or maybe he is just embarrassed things once again failed to be the worst case, possibly a mixture of the two.

He only gets a couple of steps away before he turns around again at the sound of his boyfriend’s voice. “Tweek.” Catching Craig’s eyes over his shoulders, he follows their gaze when they shift down to his bare legs.

Realizing he made the trip all the way here with no pants on and no awareness of this lack of proper attire draws a shriek from him. “Oh god!” How had he made it there without being accosted or kidnapped or killed or, again, worse? 

“Yeah,” the still sleepy figure drawls not entirely unappreciatively. His boyfriend is pretty cute, if concerning and emotional enough for himself and Craig’s entire family all wrapped into one body. “How are you not freezing?”

“I… don’t know...?” Tweek’s head tilts in a large tic, even as he lets himself be baffled as to how he didn’t even feel the cold outside. He has always had a high tolerance for it, stemming from childhood when all he wore was the ill-buttoned top and pants or when he played Barbarian Tweek, but at least then he had been somewhat aware of the temperature.

“C’mere.” Craig’s hand pats the bed, encouraging the blond to come back over. 

Blinking hard, Tweek does as requested, flinching a little when the hand shifts to patting his bare thigh. He hardly minds being touched by Craig at this point, but a little warning would have been nice. It’s only for a moment anyway, as the hand shifts back to the bed, lifting up the blanket. 

The blank stare offered in response draws a heavy sigh. “You are freezing, dude. Your leg is like ice. Now get in the bed already.” 

Tweek begins babbling about how he can just borrow a pair of pants for the walk home, so he isn’t imposing, since it’s bad enough he barged here in the middle of the night, and Tricia is probably already going to murder him, and his parents will probably do the same when they find out he’s gone since he didn’t tell anyone where he was going. 

This nervous rambling is interrupted sharply by Craig’s commanding, and slightly irritated if Tweek bothers to hear it, voice. “Bed. Now. I texted your parents. You can go home in the morning, but you’re not going anywhere else tonight that isn’t in my bed with me.”

Despite the pleading expression that implores his boyfriend to see reason, the blond is already climbing beneath the toasty warm blanket. “Jesus. It’s like a furnace in here. How are you not burning up?” he grouses playfully even as he snuggles himself up to the primary source of the very heat he is supposedly complaining about.

Arms wrapping themselves securely around the somewhat smaller figure, Craig hums an indifferent answer. He is already well on his way to being back asleep. Tweek doubts he will achieve such a state at all that night, but he is content to lay there in the comfort and safety of his not-dead-or-worse boyfriend’s arms.


End file.
